For more than a year Democrats have been obsessed with blaming Russia for “stealing” the 2016 election from their nominee, Hillary Clinton, even to the point of accusing the Trump campaign of “colluding” with Moscow to accomplish the mission.

A favorite narrative that emerged early but then was supplanted by the “collusion” lie was that Russia “hacked” the election — meaning that Russian cyber-warriors managed to penetrate enough U.S. voting systems in order to ‘change ballots’ in favor of President Donald J. Trump.

There’s never been any evidenceof that and in fact, U.S. intelligence agencies have never produced any proof that votes were changed, even if Russian hackers were attempting to do so.

Well, the ‘election hacking’ narrative was jump-started again earlier this month when Trump-hating NBC News published an ‘explosive’ story quoting the senior cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security who allegedly claimed that, indeed, Russian hackers managed to penetrate dozens of states’ voting systems.

The network reported online:

The U.S. official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking says the Russians successfully penetrated the voter registration rolls of several U.S. states prior to the 2016 presidential election.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Jeanette Manfra, the head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, said she couldn’t talk about classified information publicly, but in 2016, “We saw a targeting of 21 states and an exceptionally small number of them were actually successfully penetrated.”

There you have it, Hillary supporters! The smoking gun evidence you’ve been waiting for! When are the impeachment proceedings going to begin? When is that nincompoop Trump going to be hauled out of the Oval Office in shackles!?

As noted by Infowars, Manfra has since issued a statement about the alleged Russian cyber-penetrations of U.S. voting systems.

“Recent NBC reporting has misrepresented facts and confused the public with regard to Department of Homeland Security and state and local government efforts to combat election hacking,” she said in a statement.

“First off, let me be clear: we have no evidence – old or new – that any votes in the 2016 elections were manipulated by Russian hackers,” she continued. “NBC News continues to falsely report my recent comments on attempted election hacking – which clearly mirror my testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee last summer – as some kind of ‘breaking news,’ incorrectly claiming a shift in the administration’s position on cyber threats.

“As I said eight months ago, a number of states were the target of Russian government cyber actors seeking vulnerabilities and access to U.S. election infrastructure,” Manfra continued. “In the majority of cases, only preparatory activity like scanning was observed, while in a small number of cases, actors were able to access the system but we have no evidence votes were changed or otherwise impacted [emphasis added].”

She noted that the network’s “irresponsible reporting, which is being roundly criticized elsewhere in the media and by security experts alike, undermines the ability of the Department of Homeland Security, our partners at the Election Assistance Commission, and state and local officials across the nation to do our incredibly important jobs.

“While we’ll continue our part to educate NBC and others on the threat, more importantly, the Department of Homeland Security and our state and local partners will continue our mission to secure the nation’s election systems,” she said.

Frankly, Manfra and everyone else associated with this issue could “reassure” and “educate” the Left-wing hacks in the American media until they’re blue in the face, but it won’t change their penchant to invent crises in order to implicate Trump.

So don’t expect this to be the last fake news report we see by the disgustingly dishonest “mainstream media.”